


It’s a secret I can keep.  (Except when I’m tired, except when I’m feeling caught off-guard.)

by wrongendofthebed



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 04:03:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4549668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrongendofthebed/pseuds/wrongendofthebed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitzsimmons have a heart to heart one night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It’s a secret I can keep.  (Except when I’m tired, except when I’m feeling caught off-guard.)

It had been an awful day. Certainly not the worst that she had encountered, but awful all the same. She had been back with the team instead of undercover with HYDRA for a few weeks, and was beginning to feel back into some stripe of the swing of things, but it wasn’t the same. And how could it be? They were no longer on the bus, there were more new people than Jemma could count, and she no longer had her best friend at her side, completing her sentences. Even though she was back with everyone, there were some moments that she never felt more alone.  
Sleep was still eluding her, so she was attempting to meditate in the room they had built for Skye. The biochemist had put on cricket and frog sounds in the background, and had managed to get her neural activity down to a level that the lights imitated sunset. She noticed, with some corner of her mind, when someone else came and sat beside her. After a bit, she slowly opened her eyes, but kept her breathing steady so that the lights would stay low.  
Part of her wasn’t surprised to see that that person was Fitz.  
He was sitting across from her, legs folded, mimicking her meditating posture. Their eyes met when he finally stopped slowly looking around the room, at the dimmed lights. His face betrayed how nervous he was, opening his mouth and closing it a couple of times, before finally managing to put his thoughts together. “The li-light, it r-reminds me of when I was a k-kid at my gram’s, my cousins and I used to spend evenings in the fields catching –“. He stopped and glanced at the floor, seemingly at a loss for words.  
“Fireflies?” Jemma asked, quietly. Fitz nodded, grimacing a smile of thanks, and she sighed. “That used to be my favorite. The other kids and I would spend the day –“. It was her turn to stop mid sentence, although she stopped more abruptly, as if she had started to tell a story she wasn’t supposed to. She met his eyes, then glanced into her lap, let her posture relax a bit, and started fiddling with her hands.  
Fitz gave her a still slight, but more genuine smile when their eyes met this time, encouraging her to continue. At that, the girl who had been his best, and possibly only, friend for so long began to tell him stories of her life that he had never heard before. She told him about the bowl cut she sported, defending the hair cut by laughing about the mid nineties, and how she was consistently mistaken for a boy by everyone but her parents. How it allowed her to be more daring, because people expected boys to be daring, to climb things, to have pretend sword fights, to race against cars on their bikes. He noticed how her face lit up when she talked about the times she borrowed a friend’s swim trunks, and they jumped off of the bridge that the big kids always did, into the river, how she laughed when she remembered how terrified her mother had been when she retold the tale later.  
As she trailed off, she broke eye contact again, and Fitz asked what had happened to change everything. He didn’t say it, but he knew that the woman sitting in front of him as not as self-assured and confident as the child she talked about being. She sighed at that, telling him that there was only so long that she blended in with the boys, and when she started looking different, people started expecting her to act and dress differently. That she had traded in her grass-stained shirts for shorts she couldn’t climb trees in, more out of having no other choice than personal preference.  
“They’re some of my best memories, Fitz.” Smiling, she continued. “The memories of being that small boy on her bike, topless and carefree -.” She broke off, then, with a noise that might have been a laugh, or a sob.  
The following silence was heavy, and after a few moments, Fitz realized that she was ashamed.  
He told her then, in his stuttering and limited way, of how he used to spend so much time talking with his Mum, of the flowers he used to pick everywhere they went. How they always had to budget in fifteen extra minutes walking time to get anywhere on time, because he would always pick flowers.  
Once silence took the room again, the tracks of crickets and frogs long over, they stayed sitting there. After a bit, their hands shifted so they were resting together on the floor between the two of them. Who was to say who had shifted most, but they ended up knee to knee, forehead to forehead, and stayed that way until they heard the first movement of the morning, people heading for their workouts and coffee.


End file.
